The Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 8, 1918: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919United States. Army. American Expeditionary Forces
History
The Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 8, 1918: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919
United States. Army. American Expeditionary Forces
World War, 1914-1918 -- Periodicals; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Periodicals
All delusions to the contrary, the censorship, though it learns an awful
lot, doesn't care a tinker's hoot about nine-tenths of the stuff it
learns. It isn't concerned with Private Jones's morals, with Corporal
Brown's unpaid grocery bills, with Sergeant Smith's mother-in-law, with
Lieutenant Johnson's fraternity symbols. It is, however, actively
concerned in keeping out of correspondence all matters relating to the
location and movement of troops, all items which pieced together might
furnish the common enemy with information which would be valuable to him
in the conduct of his nefarious enterprises.
In addition to keeping such damaging information out of soldiers' and
officers' correspondence, the base censorship is lying in wait for
everything and anything in the mail line which the senders hope to slip
through uncensored. It regularly goes over a large proportion of the
mail which has already been vised by company officers. It sifts through
all mail for the army from neutral countries; and finally it censors all
letters in foreign languages, written by men in the A. E. F.--letters
which company officers are forbidden to O. K.
In the exercise of this last-named function lies perhaps the greatest
task allotted to the base censorship. Our army is probably the most
"international" in history, and it sends letters to the base written in
forty-six different languages, excluding English. Out of 600 such
letters--a typical day's grist--the chances are but half will be written
in Italian, followed in the order of their numerousness, by those
inscribed in Polish, French and Scandinavian. The censor's staff handles
mail couched in twenty-five European languages, many tongues and
dialects of the Balkan States and a scattering few in Yiddish, Chinese,
Japanese, Hindu, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Persian and Greek, to say nothing
of a number in Philippine dialects.
A Few Are in German
An interesting by-product of the censors' work is the discovery of
foreign language interpreters within the ranks of the army. One soldier,
for example, wrote in Turkish and wrote so well that the censor handling
the letters in that tangled tongue passed on his name to those higher
up. As a result, the man was detailed to the interpreters' corps where
he is now serving his adopted country ably and well.
Seldom, say the members of the censor's staff, is anything forbidden
found in the foreign language letters. The only striking feature about
them as a whole is the small number that are written in German. In fact
the Chinese letters as a rule outnumber those expressed in the language
of the Kaiser.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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